


Part of a Whole

by TheManyFacesofJester



Category: Sense8 (TV), Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: F/F, M/M, Murder Mystery, Sense8 AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-15
Updated: 2017-05-12
Packaged: 2018-10-05 17:31:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10313429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheManyFacesofJester/pseuds/TheManyFacesofJester
Summary: A cyber-crime. A stabbing. A hit-and-run. A shooting. A series of seemingly unrelated crimes and events are witnessed by 7 seemingly unrelated strangers, but the dots start connecting when they realize they're all inside each others head. Alone they can do nothing, but together they're unstoppable.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you ever have to write 3 outlines just to get a story organized, you'll know how exhilarating and exhausting it is to write this! I had a wonderful time putting together the first chapter of this incredible story for you, and I hope you have a fantastic time reading it! I don't know how the writers of Sense8 do it, but honestly power to them! Keep checking back for updates, and enjoy!

1

“-dangerous cybercriminal,” Charles Lee finished, a useless and boring PowerPoint slideshow projecting behind him. Between the light from the screen and Lee’s unnecessarily loud voice, Ben Tallmadge’s headache had only gotten worse.

“What is he doing with all the money though?” a random agent asked after pulling the pen he was chewing on out of his mouth.

“Gambling it away, spending it on women, eating it, who gives a fuck?” Lee responded.

“Someone stealing that much money from that many major corporations must have some kind of end game though,” Ben said, finding Lee’s response inappropriate and totally off topic. As usual.

“How very observant of you, Tallmack, but knowing he’s spending it doesn’t help us track him down.”

“It’s Tallmadge, sir,” which Lee of course knew, “and it might if we can find a pattern between the businesses he’s stealing from. You said the businesses he’s choosing to steal from are random, but someone taking enough money to bankrupt a company isn’t worried about being noticed.”

“So what, he wants the attention?” the pen-mucher asked.

“I think he wants to give the businesses attention, like he wants them to be publically humiliated,” Ben continued. Lee was giving Ben ‘that look’, the one he shot him whenever he said something more useful that whatever Lee had mumbled.

“You think it’s someone on the inside?” Lee said, and he looked like he was waiting for a punchline.

“Yes, I think it’s-”

“You think,” Lee started, rushing to click back through his slideshow, “one person worked for and has a vendetta against 14 different companies? These are all not connected by any common thread, or parent company, we’ve already checked, so if you think-”

“I meant ‘inside’ as in the FBI.”

There was a hush. Agents didn’t accuse other agents.

“The FBI?”

“Whoever this is has accesses to a lot of advanced technology, and if they’re not worried about getting caught it might be because they’re the one who’s supposed to do the catching.”

A moment passed and Ben could hear Lee grinding his teeth inside his skull. That also wasn’t helping his headache.

“You want to make a case out of that, go ahead,” Lee sputtered. “But that’s all on you, Tallmack. You can check my slides for anything helping your ‘case’ while you clean up this place. Meeting dismissed.”

Lee seemed satisfied in his disciplining of Ben and so did the other agents, leaving Ben alone to tidy up the room without saying a word. Not like that was different from the norm, but it was a more tangible silence this time; a more intentional one.

A deep sigh, a roll of his eyes, and Ben began to pick up what Lee and the others had left behind; Chits of paper, pens, a water bottle that could have just been thrown away. There was also somehow gum stuck under a chair and Ben had no idea how that had gotten there, but he wasn’t about to touch it so he stood up and left it there. That was when he saw him: a man sitting in a swivel chair that didn’t match the décor of the FBI office room at all.

“Hello, sir, are you supposed to be in here?” Ben said walking forward. He was aware that he was supposed to be walking up the side of the office, but he found his eyes telling him that he was walking down the hallway of a messy but homey apartment.

“I was literally gonna ask you the same thing,” the other man said, not moving from his chair, which perfectly matched the wooden computer desk he was now sitting at.

“Who are- What is this?” Ben asked before bumping into a chair overflowing with technical equipment.

“Hey watch it, what are you high?” the other man shouted as he rushed to rescue what Ben had knocked on the floor.

“No, I don’t… think so. I’m supposed to be cleaning the office, is this a joke?” he asked. He was certain he wasn’t on drugs, unless this was some new stunt of Lee’s to try and get him fired. He wouldn’t go that far though, would he? Ben wasn’t sure, but all of this was too weird.

“Listen, hey, listen,” the man said, snapping his fingers so Ben would look at him. He was shorter than Ben was, with a head full of dark brown curls and a beard to match. He looked friendly enough, with laughing eyes and a light dusting of sunspots on his face, but there was no way in the world he could be real, so Ben shut he eyes and counted to three.

His eyes opened and he was back in the office. He’d walked a few feet forward, but he was still there. His head didn’t hurt so much anymore, but his stomach was in knots. Something had to be very wrong with him.

2

Caleb Brewster had come to terms with the fact that his morning was a product of being overtired and paranoid about the FBI being on his tail. The man in his room several hours ago had certainly looked like an agent, with a sleek suit and trim hair. He’d been prettier than the agents Caleb remembered, but he figured that was his overtired mind giving him something worth looking at. And yet, Caleb wasn’t sure why he would hallucinate an agent he’d never meet before. Surely if he was going to imagine the FBI showing up to take him in he would imagine someone he hated, someone as corrupt as all the companies he was taking money from.

It was all too weird, and Caleb wanted to put it in the back of his mind, but he still had a headache so he decided to do some online fishing. He agreed that he would do one sweep of the FBI database for current employees to look for a match with the guy from last night and that was it.

Stepping over his overfed orange cat, Caleb made himself a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and returned to his post at his desktop computer. The items the man had knocked over the other day were still on the floor which bothered Caleb for two reasons. The first being that someone physical would have to have knocked them over, and hallucinations can’t move objects. The second was because that equipment was mighty expensive and since Caleb was no longer working for the FBI he wouldn’t be able to steal any more of those items if they broke.

Taking both those thoughts and pushing them deep down into the back of his mind, Caleb hacked himself into the FBI database and began searching through the current staff. There were a number of white men with brown hair, but no one who looked like the man from the night before, which relieved Caleb until he hit the last agent on the list.

Benjamin Tallmadge. He was a perfect fit. His eyes, his hair, his face, everything was exactly as Caleb remembered it, and that spooked him. It might have been possible that he and Ben had bumped into each other when he worked at the FBI, but Ben’s date-of-hire claimed he was hired a full month after Caleb left. It wouldn’t have been possible.

But this Ben character couldn’t have been in Caleb’s apartment any more than he could have been. He disappeared; actual FBI agents don’t do that. Unless they want to, but they don’t usually play that dumb while storming the home of a man who steals millions from billion dollar corporations.

Unable to come to a definite conclusion about the occurrences from that morning, Caleb decided the best course of action was to go to sleep. Given that Caleb was, in fact, overtired, the sleeping part was easy. That was until a voice came through the walls and woke him up. At least that’s what Caleb assumed before he turned on the lamp by his bed.

The light went on, and the voice became connected to a man walking in front of Caleb’s bed. Or not his bed, rather, but a bed, at least. The room before Caleb was not his own, but a high-class apartment with a large open window peaking a view at the city below.

“I understand, goodnight,” the pacing man said, then he hung up the phone he was talking into, went up to a wall, and began lightly but firmly banging his forehead against it.

“You alright?”

“The fuck!” the other man screamed as he turned to face Caleb, apparently just noticing his presence.

“Same,” Caleb said as he looked the man up and down. This wasn’t Ben Tallmadge from the night before, and he didn’t look like an FBI agent, so Caleb found himself more confused than before about who he was seeing and why he was in this persons home.

“I will call the police if you don’t leave immediately,” the man said. Had Caleb turned around to find a strange man in his apartment late at night he might have attacked him, but this man was short, even compared to Caleb, and didn’t look the fighting type.

“What, the dream police?” Caleb said sarcastically.

“Is this a joke?”

“The other guy said that too.”

“What other guy?” the man shouted, now desperately looking around his room, probably to see if there were more bearded hooligans waiting for him.

“Where are we?” Caleb asked as he looked out the window, not really paying attention to the bizarre little man causing a fit.

“Somewhere very different from where you’re going,” he replied, picking up a broom and proceeding to swing it at Caleb. He’d apparently misjudged the little man. There was some fight in him. Not enough because Caleb easily avoided the broom, but there still some.

“Can you calm down? I’m just as confused as you are!” Caleb yelped as the man took another swing.

“Can you get out!” was his response as the other man swung hard and true this time. Caleb shut his eyes to brace for impact, but felt nothing but his soft sheets. He was in his home. There was no window with a view, and no man with a broom. Just a tiny apartment and a fluffy orange cat that needed help getting onto the bed.

3

“Excuse me, pardon me,” Abe Woodhull shouted as he rushed through the halls of his father’s firm after downing a handful of aspirin to combat his burning headache. No one actually moved out of his way, but he was slim and short enough to avoid crashing shoulders with too many people.

“Hey watch it will you!” Someone shouted as he brushed past them. Abe almost had the good sense not to flip them off. Almost.

“Abraham!” Shit.

“Sir,” Abe said as he skidded to a halt to avoid colliding with his father.

“Is this how you represent the company?” he hissed. “By showing up late and acting vulgar?”

“Sorry,” Abe sighed. “I would have been here on time, but I had a… break in at the apartment last night that I had to deal with.”

Abe knew he’d hesitated to say ‘break in’ because he wasn’t quite sure what had happened, but clearly his father thought he was lying and just shook his head.

“They’re waiting for you. Behave.”

That was all Richard Woodhull said as he shoved Abe into a room and shut the door. Several people sitting around a table cast bored looks at him as he walked in the room.

“Sorry,” Abe said, hopefully not as stupidly as he felt. No one said anything, though they all appeared to be waiting for him, so he quickly sat himself down in the corner of the room and pulled out his laptops to take notes. Given that his father ran the firm he was at, Abe expected to get a better job than taking notes for cases, yet here he was. His father was never one to give Abe anything he didn’t work for though, so here he was, tapping away at his laptop.

“Welcome everyone, we’ve got quite the case on our hands,” a woman said as she pulled out a folder to hand out papers to the other lawyers at the table.

“What are we looking at here? Another murder?” a man at the other end of the table said as he looked over what he’d been handed. Abe studiously tapped out every word that was said by everyone in the room.

“Sure is, and we’re getting paid a hell of a lot to defend this one. Our client is a John Simcoe. He’s the prime suspect for the murder of a Nathan Hale. Hale was last seen in a fight with Simcoe where Simcoe apparently got violent.”

“How violent?” another woman Abe didn’t know, and didn’t care to, chimed in.

“Simcoe apparently threw a few punches and attempted to smash a bottle over the victim’s head,” the first woman replied. “The next time Hale was seen he’d been stabbed to death.”

“Alright, what evidence have we got?”

“Nothing, there’s no tape of the incident or any witnesses…”

Abe typed at his laptop, barely listening to the words he was writing. It wasn’t until he heard the sound of heels clicking on tile that he looked up. But instead of a room full of lawyers he was currently sitting in the clean hotel lobby. People moved around him, not paying him any attention, except one man behind the counter of the front desk. A man with a hard face and light hair was staring at him intensely.

The man looked about Abe’s age, though slightly taller, and held himself to a much higher standard apparently, his nose perpetually turned up and his eyebrows always high on his forehead. He stared at Abe for a while and Abe stared back. While Abe was vaguely aware that the other man was the only person who could see him, the hotel clerk, or whoever he was, didn’t seem to understand that, and broke eye contact in order to look around, obviously trying to figure out if anyone else thought a man in a polished mahogany chair sitting in the lobby of a hotel was at all strange. Abe looked around as well, but no one else was staring, or looking, or noticing at all.

Abe got slightly caught up in looking at the surroundings of the hotel so by the time he looked back at the clerk he was on the phone, though he was still staring. He was unsure what the man was doing until he saw him mouth the words ‘security’.

“No, don’t do that!” Abe shouted as he stood up, but the man was gone, and so was the hotel, and he was back in a room full of lawyers who he now had the full attention of. Everyone looked sufficiently weirded out.

“Sorry, I thought… Sorry,” Abe said as he sat back down. The lawyers shared a look with each other, some rolling their eyes, others pursing their lips and shaking their heads. He felt like a fool, but after last night he was afraid this was going to become a pattern. Who were these people he was seeing?

4

“Are you sure you’re alright, Robert?”

“I’m fine,” Rob Townsend said as he discretely used a lemon-scented Lysol wipe to clean the counter of the front desk.

“You’ve been working so hard, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were tired and needed a break,” Samuel Townsend continued, his full attention on his son.

“It was just a mistake, I acted too quickly to call security. It turned out to be nothing, and everything is fine; I am fine!”

His father sighed, but gave him a smile. Rob returned part of that smile and began tidying up whatever other inch of the counter he found to be out of order.

“I will say I’m very glad it turned out to be nothing, you calling security that is!” Samuel exclaimed as he took a seat to sort through a pile of papers. “Apparently one of our permanent tenants is on trial for murder.”

That was enough for Rob to stop what he was doing.

“Who?”

“John Simcoe, from the top floor,” he explained. “I don’t know everything, but you had me worried when you made that call.”

“Murder?” Rob repeated. “I hope he’s found innocent or we might lost business.”

His father laughed harshly in reply.

“Lose business? Is that what you’re concern is? I’d like him to be found innocent because he hasn’t committed any crime!”

“Of course I want that as well- I just worry about the hotel,” Rob sighed. “If people think we house criminals here our reputation could be ruined.”

Rob’s father stood up and touched his shoulder.

“You worry too much about things that don’t matter, Robert,” and that was all he said on the matter before leaving Rob alone behind the counter. The reputation of their source of income didn’t seem like something that didn’t matter to Rob, but his father had always looked on the brighter side of life.

“-apparently Simcoe stabbed him to death, isn't that dreadful,” a woman said to a man as they walked past the front desk, much to Rob’s aggravation. Word spread much too fast in such a large building, and the stress of it all was making his head hurt worse than it had been.

He blamed his incessant headache for acting too quickly that morning. He must have seen a man sitting down and his pounding head had made it appear to be stranger than it was. People went in and out of the lobby all day, it wasn’t a problem. He’d had some tea since then and he wasn’t going to let that happen again, especially with all the worrisome talk of murder spreading through his hotel.

Rob’s internal monologue of justification for his earlier behavior was interrupted by a phone ringing, which he gladly picked up to distract himself from his jumbled thoughts, but instead of hearing a person asking for towels or the number for room service he heard something that sounded very much like a police radio.

“I am in pursuit of a hit-and-run, I need backup,” a woman’s voice shouted in his ear.

“You need what?” Rob answered, but not into the phone, because it was gone, as was natural given that he was now in a police car and not his hotel lobby.

“What the hell!” a policewoman in the driver’s seat screamed as she slammed on the brakes. The car, which had been going at top speed, came to a stunningly fast halt and while Rob was trying to regain his composure the officer had already drawn her gun and was pointing it at him.

“What is going on?” Rob cried out, throwing his hands in the air.

“Who are you and how did you get in here?” the woman asked, ignoring his question which she simultaneously held the gun and brushed back her long brown hair away from her sweat covered face.

“I have no idea how I got here but I demand to be taken back to my hotel this minute!”

“This isn’t a fucking taxi service!” the woman shouted as she used her foot to kick the passenger side door open. “Get out!”

“With pleasure,” Rob said. He began to climb out, but both the officer and him turned when they heard the radio go off again. Rob wouldn’t have looked, but he heard the familiar sound of a woman asking for towels.

“Is anyone there? Room 316 needs fresh towels!”

“I’m so sorry,” Rob said into the phone. He was back in the hotel, and everything was as it should be, except his hands were shaking just slightly. Anyone would react the same if they had just had a gun pointed directly at them. Only no one had pointed a gun at him. No one could have. He hadn’t gone anywhere, had he?

5

If there was one thing Anna didn’t need right now it was a lecture from the police chief.

“Sir, I know what I saw,” Anna said, interrupting him again.

“What exactly did you see, Officer Strong?” Chief Benedict Arnold asked, obviously ready to argue with her about anything she was going to say. Anna figured it was best to recite what happened as succinctly as she would on a police report.

“I witnessed a hit-and-run on Second Street and pursued the speeding vehicle until they arrived at a dead end. At that point I left my vehicle and approached the other car. I read Mayor Roger’s his rights then took him into custody.”

She left out the part where a strange man had appeared in her car and the disappeared as quickly as he’d arrived. She didn’t think it would help her case that much.

“That’s not how Robert- I mean Mayor Roger’s sees’ it,” the chief said. “He says a reckless cop began tailgating him and out of fear he speed up before reaching a dead end where you aggressively arrested him!”

“With all respect, of course he’d say that, sir, no one wants to be arrested for murder-”

“What murder?”

“From the hit-and-run!” Anna practically screamed, her head pounding as she became more and more frustrated by the minute.

“What hit-and-run? Officer Strong, there are no bodies anywhere on Second Street, and no witnesses claiming they saw anything.”

That was strange. Anna had been sure the man who had been hit had died, but she supposed someone could have taken an injured man to the hospital before any police showed up.

“Well the traffic cams must have caught-”

“They’ve been checked,” the chief said loud and clear then clicked a remote to turn on the television behind him. There a series of traffic cam videos showed an empty street and the Mayor’s car passing by without any issue.

“That can’t be…” Anna trailed off as she watched each camera and each angle replay over and over on the screen.

“They’re playing yesterday’s footage,” a woman’s voice said, and Anna turned around to find herself far away from the chief’s office and instead in a fabulously large bathroom where a blonde woman was relaxing in a bathtub filled with bubbles.

“What?” Anna asked, staring at the woman who seemed to be taking Anna’s appearance in what was obviously her house altogether too well.

“He’s running yesterday’s footage,” she repeated, pulling one hand out of the water to turn down some light jazz music that she had playing on an old record player. “I do it all the time.”

“Are you like the man before?” Anna asked, remembering her encounter with the man who wanted to go back to his hotel. The blonde woman shrugged, and Anna wasn’t sure what to make of the whole situation. It felt much tamer and more relaxing than her first strange hallucinatory encounter.

“Are you a police officer?” the woman asked. She sounded like she had just noticed and was slightly worried by that. Anna recognized that worry in an instant.

“I’m Officer Anna Strong, miss. And you are?”

“I’m Mary,” the woman said. “And I’m right about those tapes. They’re yesterday’s, I’m sure of it.”

“Sure?” Anna said skeptically.

“You have to have an end goal in mind if you’re going to accuse someone of a crime, so unless you have personal beef with this driver why would you lie? It’s an old tape, Anna.”

“But-” Anna started, only to be interrupted by the chief.

“But nothing. This is a demotion to traffic duty.”

“Traffic duty?”

“You’re lucky I don’t fire you, now get out of my office.”

Anna wanted to look closer at the tapes to see if this Mary woman was right, but Chief Arnold switched the television off as soon as he could and seemed adamant that she leave the room. So many things had happened all at once, and Anna felt a swirl of emotions, but she felt certain that the moment she’d shared with the blonde woman Mary was real, not matter how abnormal it was, and if it was there might be some truth to what she was saying about the traffic cameras. But why would anyone let someone get away with murder?

6

Ventilation shafts were small places for small people and Mary Smith particularly liked them. They felt like an adventure. No matter how many she shimmied her way through she always felt a rush of thrill. Not that she always had to climb through them to commit robberies, on the contrary, in many cases she could just climb through a window, but where was the fun in that?

After she had gone an appropriate distance, Mary pulled out her phone to take a look at the panorama shots she’d taken of the jewelry store during the day before. It was hard to focus on the tiny screen with her headache, but the bath before had soothed her a little, though the visit from the phantom police officer had thrown her for a bit of a loop. She figured she was partially dreaming though and didn’t pay it any heed.

From her pictures she could see the first of three security cameras, and if her sense of direction was correct, which it always was, then she was right above the first one. Pulling a bottle of spray paint out of her pocket Mary positioned herself directly next to the security camera and sprayed it with a liberal amount of hot pink paint. She wiggled her way around to do the same to the other two cameras, then felt safe enough to lower herself down to the floor, where she had already disarmed the motion detectors from the outside.

Once on the floor she began to dance gently around the room, clearing the place of any jewels or gems she found of value. She was disappointed to find that some of them were frauds. Those she sighed at and left behind, having no use for worthless gemstones, pretty as they were. Still, she acquired lots of lovelier, more valuable ones that she preferred and stashed all her stolen goods away carefully and discretely.

Then, just as she was about to leave, she heard a voice.

“Help!” a woman’s voice cried out and Mary turned to see a woman with long dark hair and dark skin running towards her. She had a smattering of blood across her that Mary could see even in the darkness of the alley she suddenly found herself in.

“Can you help me?” the woman asked, and Mary was trying to understand when she saw the body of a man on the ground at the end of the alley.

“I don’t understand…” Mary began, not sure how she had gotten here or what was happening. This was too much for Mary to handle all at once.

The other woman seemed to understand that Mary was not capable of helping her at the moment and began seeking some way out of the alley, though it looked useless given that there was no exit from that end. Mary didn’t know why the woman didn’t go straight to the other side, that is until she saw three men in fine suits with small guns begin approaching them.

They didn’t say anything, but they were obviously only going for the other woman, totally ignorant of Mary’s presence. Still, panic set in and before Mary knew what she was doing she’d already made an escape plan and set it into motion. It was a weird sensation though, like she wasn’t in her body anymore. She could feel it when she moved; she and the other woman were both present in one body, moving together but at the whim of Mary. It was a relief to Mary that she could help the other woman and herself at the same time, though she wasn’t sure how it was happening in the slightest.

Gun fire sounded the second Mary started moving in action, but all shots missed her as she leapt to the top of a dumpster, and from there soared to reach the broken ladder of an old fire escape. The ladder was the scariest part, as she had no way to dodge any gunshots that came at her while she was on it, but at a chance none came too close as she zipped her way up to the roof. From there she kept running, knowing better than to stay where anyone could corner her, and leapt from one tight building to the next, and so on until she was at least a solid block away from the men who were shooting at her, or rather, the other woman.

On the ground once again Mary became cognizant of watching the other woman rather than being her, and their bodies now moved of their own accord instead of just Mary’s.

“Thank you,” the woman said, and Mary nodded, out of breathe, but glad to have been of aid. “But I don’t understand.”

“I don’t either, but I think you need to get to a police station.”

The other woman nodded in agreement, looking over her shoulders and down the streets surrounding her.

“I need to get my son first,” she said in response.

“Do you need any help?” Mary offered, not that she was sure how she could provide any, but if she figured out the body-sharing once, she could do it again.

“No, thank you miss, I’m fine from here. You keep yourself safe though, alright.”

Mary nodded as the woman walked off and the street dissolved rapidly into the jewelry store. It was so silent that Mary felt unnaturally she was in the wrong spot in time and space. Her heart was beating too fast, and she told herself it was just from imagining such a vivid scenario, but the rust on her hands from the ladder she’d climbed to escape the armed men claimed differently.

7

“Now miss, tell us everything that happened,” a policeman said once he’d gotten Abigail Winter seated in a private room and her son, Cicero, was safely in police care. She was still covered in blood and probably in shock, but she refused to leave the police station until she could give a statement about what had happened to her while it was fresh in her mind. She would tell them everything, except the part about the mysterious blonde woman. That must have been some product of the shock.

“Well sir, I was taking a walk with my boyfriend, Akinbode Jordan, when we saw a man get struck by another car. We weren’t sure what had happened but when we tried to go over and help the man who’d been hit three men – three very well dressed men – came over and took the body away in a car. A nice car. Maybe a Cadillac. They said they were police officers, but they didn’t have any badges or ask us for our statements so we figured we’d better go to the police station anyway.”

“And did you?” the man interrupted.

“No sir, I’m getting to that. We were going to but we felt like we were being followed, so we took a few wrong turns just to make sure and all of a sudden the three men in the suits were back. I told Akinbode we should run but before we could do anything they shot him.”

“With what?”

“It looked like handguns sir. I wouldn’t know what kind though.”

“Would you’re boyfriend, Akim-”

“Akinbode and I don’t know. Why would he?”

“Well, was he connected to any of the gangs in the area?”

“No he wasn’t,” Abigail answered in a way that was her attempted at being friendly when she felt rather angry. She hadn’t finished telling him what had happened yet.

“Are you sure?” he asked, and Abigail took a deep breath.

“Yes, I’m sure. And if you’re implying that him being shot was related to gang activity, it wasn’t. The same men who took away the body from that hit-and-run shot Akinbode. I’m sure the two are related.”

“Well, let’s not jump to any conclusions miss, alright” the officer jumped in, too fast for Abigail to feel comfortable. “What happened after he was shot?”

“They cornered me in an alley but I managed to climb up a fire escape and get across a few roofs before they could shoot me, but they tried to sir.”

“You escaped without a scratch?” The officer sounded skeptical.

“My boyfriend is dead, sir, I wouldn’t call that a clean getaway!” She wasn’t yelling, not yet, but she would if she had to. This interview was going a strange direction and she didn’t like the tone of the officer. Something was off here.

“Alright miss, I understand, why don’t I give you a moment and go get some paperwork for you to fill out,” he said and wandered out of the room, leaving Abigail alone. But not really.

Looking up into the two-way mirror Abigail thought she would see her own face, but instead saw that of a young man with trim brown hair. Abigail moved her head, and his moved with hers. Getting up from the table, she touched the mirror and found herself in a small, neat apartment facing the man she saw in the mirror.

“Hello,” the man said, and Abigail waved in response.

“Are you like the blonde woman from the alley?” Abigail asked.

“Are you like the man from the messy apartment?” the man asked.

“I’m think I must be,” she responded, looking around slightly. “Where am I?”

“Just my apartment,” the man said. “Where were you?”

“A police station,” Abigail answered, and the man seemed to notice the blood on her clothes. He directed her to sit down on his couch with him and Abigail graciously accepted his offer.

“Are you alright?” he asked, and he seemed genuinely concerned, so Abigail told him what happened, every detail without interruption, somewhere along the way telling him her name and learning his: Ben.

“That’s a professional hit,” Ben said.

“How do you know?”

“I work in the FBI, and I know a professional hit when I see one, and so should they. Something isn’t right there, and you need to get protection as fast as you can.”

“Protection?” Abigail asked, mulling the word over in her mind. “Like witness protection?”

“Yes. You witnessed a crime and someone targeted you for it. Don’t let the police push the ‘gang related crime’ bit, that’s obviously not what happened. Ask for protection, and demand it.”

“How about you do it for me,” Abigail said, and the two were suddenly sitting in the police station. Ben seemed confused until the police officer came back in and Abigail felt the same sensation of being one with him as she did with Mary and knew he was in control of her for the moment. It was like he had given her a moment to relax and reflect on what had happened to her while he handled the irritating police officer.

Abigail listened to what her own body was saying as Ben argued for – no – demanded witness protection on her behalf. In the beginning Abigail would comment once or twice to make the language more her own, but by the end she and Ben were switching off half and half for talking, fully in unison with what the other wanted to say. By that time the officer knew he didn’t have a choice and left to get in contact with witness protection services.

“Thank you,” Abigail said as soon as the officer left and Ben was sitting by her side.

“You’re very welcome,” he replied. “I’m not sure how this is working, or what this is, but I expect I’ll be seeing you again.”

“Me or the blonde woman or that other man you met. Or more, if there are any,” Abigail added. Ben nodded in agreement and disappeared again. Abigail was alone once more, but it didn’t feel like it. The headache that had been bothering her for so many days was finally gone, and in its place she felt less alone than she had in a very long time.


	2. Chapter 2

1

If there was one job Anna hated more than anything in the world it was traffic duty. A traffic light went out on a main intersection and she spent the day directing honking cars across the street, which was a nightmare for every reason imaginable, but it was made worse by Mayor Rogers giving her a sickening smile from the window of his Cadillac.

When Anna arrived back at the station she was greeted by a series of dirty looks from co-workers she barely knew or cared about. Word seemed to have spread on how she’d been demoted, though her version of what happened and the version that was traveling were likely seriously different stories. If she thought it would change anything she might try telling people the truth, but whatever was going on was bigger than her. Someone was dead, and no one seemed to care, and if she wasn’t careful she could end up the same way.

This, however, did not mean she was going to give up. The phantom voice of Mary, the woman from the bathtub, was still echoing in Anna’s memory. She said the tapes were from yesterday, so there had to be real tapes of the crime somewhere. Locating them was going to prove challenging, however, as the job of checking traffic surveillance cameras was mysteriously absent from her duties as a traffic officer. Almost like someone was afraid she’d find something.

All of this played in Anna’s mind as she sat at her new desk, her hand casually thumbing over her badge. There was a moment, a very short one, where Anna was aware she was traveling. The space around her changed from her own desk to one very similar, only messier with the kind of disarray that comes from a permanent office space as opposed to a new one.

“Hello?” Anna said out loud, searching her surroundings. Her eyes scanned what looked almost similar to the inside of a police office before landing on a man with tousled brown hair who was staring at her in an almost exasperated way.

“Another one, really?” he said with a sigh. Anna felt it inappropriate, but she could only find it in herself to laugh.

“How many people have you seen?” she asked when she finished laughing, no longer perturbed by the visions of people she was seeing. This man appeared as lucid and as real as she was and if he wasn’t concerned about any of this than she wouldn’t be either. She had other problems to worry about.

“Two,” Ben replied, and was about to continue when a woman appeared in the room with them.

2

People tended to say that in situations like Abigail’s, everything happened too quickly. They say 'it all went by in a flash'. This was not Abigail’s experience. Everything instead felt slow and tired, like a dream sequence in a movie too old for anyone to care about any more. She had gone from the station, where she had unfortunately spent the night, to the house of one of the officers from the station. Cicero was with her the entire time, and he was a blessing in his own right. He was old enough to not need it anymore, but he kept holding Abigail’s hand and she knew it was his turn to comfort her. She was shaken and frightened, but she had him and they were always going to take care of each other.

The officer Abigail was staying with while this mess was being sorted out was a friendly Latina woman who worked at the station and was taking her job more seriously than anyone else was, as far as Abigail could see. She was working hard to make sure Abigail and Cicero felt safe by showing them her house’s security features and doing regular sweeps of the perimeter. She’d put Abigail and Cicero in her guest suite which was more than enough for the two of them.

Still, issues had arisen with the case. Despite multiple checks in and around the area Abigail described, Akinbode’s body was nowhere to be found and no evidence of any shooting had been spotted either.

“We can’t offer you any protection for a crime that wasn’t committed,” a man who’d introduced himself as Chief Arnold said.

“Sir, Akinbode’s blood is on my clothes, so something happened to him,” Abigail argued. “No matter what happened, whether I am to be believed or not, his blood is there and it means you have to keep looking for whatever it is there to find.”

The chief didn’t seem to like that answer very much, but then he didn’t look like he liked Abigail that much either, so it was hard to discern the nuances. He simply sighed and let his lip curl into a semi-scowl, then stood up to take his leave without another word spoken between them. The conversation was apparently over and he had nothing more to day.

Abigail watched him go then stood up to make herself some coffee from the kitchen, having been given full use of all the house’s utilities whenever she needed or wanted them. The trip to the other room, however, was much longer than Abigail remembered, and it took a moment to recognize that she had not walked into a kitchen, but an office that was currently inhabited by two other people. She recognized Ben, the man she visited last time, but not the woman with brown hair tied up high in a pony-tail.

“She look familiar to you?” Ben asked, nodding his head to the other woman. Abigail shook her head, and turned to greet the other woman.

“I’m Abigail. Ben and I have already met.”

“I’m Anna,” the woman replied. Abigail had already nodded as a response to the introduction when she noticed Anna was wearing a police officer’s uniform.

3

Despite everything going perfectly fine throughout Ben’s day, he still felt off-balance. Everything felt disjointed and muddled and he couldn’t figure out why. In bouts during the day he would feel a rush of anger that came from nowhere, or a sensation of exhaustion that would disappear after too short a time. It could be that he was still concerned over the safety of Abigail, but it felt more personal, like he was experiencing her and other’s emotions for them.

Whatever the situation was he had to deal with it while sorting through the cyber-crime case. He’d made his claim that it was someone on the inside, now he had to back that up with some kind of evidence. He felt, almost, as though he had seen something that solved the whole case but just couldn’t put his finger on what it was he saw. Someone’s office, perhaps, or a rogue file, or suspicious behavior. Something had to give, and yet there was nothing coming up clearly. Everything he looked at was leading him to a dead end. Still, he was stubborn, and wouldn’t give this up until he could prove himself right or wrong, preferably right, but he was trying to care more about doing his job than showing up Charles Lee.

In a state of frustration Ben got himself an espresso and stared at the wall, thinking of nothing but the universe of cyber-criminal activity. This wall, however, was not all he was staring at for long as a brunette woman appeared directly before him. He did not recognize this woman as the one he’d seen before, nor did she bear any resemblance to the man he’d seen the first time, so he had to accept that she was someone new.

“Hello?” the woman said. From her tone of voice Ben had to gather that this was not her first time experiencing whatever this was, so they were both on the same page.

“Another one, really?” he said, and had to join the woman when she started laughing. It really was all extremely absurd.

“How many people have you seen?” she asked.

“Two,” Ben replied, and was going to say more when Abigail appeared in the office. “She look familiar to you?”

Abigail shook her head, and Anna shook hers as well, though the question was not specifically directed to her. Given that, Abigail turned her attention to the woman to introduce herself.

“I’m Abigail,” she said. “Ben and I have already met.”

“I’m Anna,” the woman replied, which was excellent information for Ben as well, given that he hadn’t bothered to ask before.

“You make three people I’ve met so far, so that brings my total of connected people up to four if I include myself,” Ben said, trying to work out the math in his head before pointing to Abigail. “But it’s 5 because you met a woman I haven’t met yet, the blonde woman-”

“Mary,” Anna interrupted.

“Mary?”

“I’ve met a blonde woman, she told me her name is Mary. I also met a man, but I don’t know much about him other than he wanted to go back to his hotel.”

“What did he look like?” Ben asked, wondering if it was the same man he’d met. “Did he have a beard?”

“A beard?” Anna repeated. “No, he was clean shaven. On the thin side. Dirty blonde hair. Anyone either of you know?”

Both Abigail and Ben shook their heads and Anna shrugged.

“That brings your count up to six. You, me, Anna here, Mary, and two men,” Abigail chipped in. Ben rolled his eyes and rubbed his forehead. This was all getting a bit convoluted. Not that it wasn’t before, but it was even worse now that there were more players getting involved.

“Excuse me miss, but are you actually an officer?” Abigail asked Anna and Ben looked up to see the response. He hadn’t thought to ask.

“I am, but I’m not much use to anyone at the moment if that’s what you’re looking for,” Anna sighed. “I just got demoted to traffic duty.”

“Is that why I keep hearing car horns in my head?” Ben asked aloud and Anna laughed.

“Try hearing them outside of your head too,” she quipped back and Ben laughed as well. In the meantime Abigail looked like she was formulating a question.

“Why were you demoted, if you don’t mind me asking,” she said, attempting caution, but she looked like she was on the verge of uncovering something and Ben was suddenly eager to see if she got the answer she was looking for.

“Apparently I falsely arrested the mayor for a crime he didn’t commit, but I swear they switched the traffic cam tapes because I saw him commit a hit-and-run-”

“On Second Street,” Abigail finished for her and the woman shared a look.

“You saw it?” Anna asked, and Ben leaned in, listening intently.

“I saw a man in what I think was a Cadillac directly run over a man on the sidewalk,” Abigail started, continuing to tell Abigail what she’d already told Ben.

“This is exactly what I need!” Anna shouted. “You’re an eyewitness! You can stand trial against the mayor!”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Ben said. “The cover-up work going into the hit-and-run is extensive, and it’s not a good sign that the police are involved that much. They demoted you just to keep you quiet and Abigail is more likely at the moment to be accused of murdering Akinbode than to be taken seriously as a witness. You need something concrete, bodies for a start.”

“If I could get my hands on the traffic tapes, the correct ones, then we’d have our proof. If you were close enough to see the crime you have to be on the tapes too! But if this is as serious as I think it is then getting caught snooping is going to get myself and possibly others killed.”

“Lemme see what I can do,” Ben said as he spun around to his computer and began typing.

“You’re FBI?” Anna asked.

“I’m an agent, yeah, and that comes with some perks,” he said. “Specifically access to information on John Doe’s admitted to hospitals and morgues. Both these bodies had to go somewhere and people don’t tend to try their luck burying bodies on their own.”

Anna and Abigail crowded around Ben as he tapped and clicked and scrolled through too much information in too little time while the women around him described the bodies of both men, the John Doe and Akinbode in detail.

“Stop!” Abigail said finally and pointed to a photograph on the screen. “That’s the man I saw get run over.”

“Are you sure?” Ben asked.

“Positive. I checked his pulse before the men came to take him away and in a hurry I cut his chin with my ring, you can see the scab.”

She was right. There was a mark on his chin that looked just right for a minor cut distributed directly after the time of death.

“There’s nothing of use listed though besides the apparent death being run over by a car, but that could have taken place anywhere in the city. It doesn’t say anything about where he died or who dropped him off or anything of that nature. I’m sorry, but this is only useful to us if we get the footage and can ID this man as the person who got hit.”

Anna and Abigail nodded at Ben’s explanation, but Anna was already thinking ahead.

“You have a lot of access to a lot that I wouldn’t, right?” she asked and Ben did a casual shrug-nod which Anna took for a yes.

“Could you do a search for anything connecting a Benedict Arnold to Robert Rogers?”

“I can try,” Ben responded and he did what he could as he navigated through the information that turned up. Most of it was nonsense, nothing particularly fascinating, but he decided to push further and found, at the end of everything, a lone PNG file labeled “NHale_Image_1”.

What showed up when Ben clicked on it was surprising. The picture was an image of four men sitting around a card table.

“That’s the chief!” Anna said, pointing to one of the men, “and that’s Mayor Rogers,” she continued, pointing to another man.

“And that’s Lee,” Ben mumbled, pointing to the man on the far right. “He’s my superior, put me on this cyber-crime case. I didn’t know he knew a Mayor Rogers of any chief of police.”

“Who’s that man there though? I don’t recognize him.”

“That’s John Simcoe,” Abigail jumped in, much to Ben and Anna’s confusion. “He’s on trial for murder. It’s all over the news.”

“Murder?” Anna asked. “Of whom?”

“Oh, no one important I don’t think,” she responded. “Nathan Hall or something.”

“Nathan Hale,” Ben corrected, having pulled up the story on his computer. Before he could read more, however, he jumped back to look at the file name.

“NHale,” he said aloud. “Do you think they’re connected, the file name and this person?”

“It’s possible, but might also be a coincidence,” Anna said. “You’ll have to look into it more. I’ll see what I can do from my end too. There’s something strange about these three people being in the same room as a man on trial for murder.”

“I’m not going to be of much use in this area, but if either of you need anything, just ask,” Abigail said, and Anna nodded.

“Suppose we get the tapes, or something useful,” Anna began, turning to face Abigail. “Would you be willing to stand trial as a witness?”

“Might as well,” Abigail said. “I’m already too deep in this mess to say no. Whatever you need, I’ll do. Stay safe, friends.”

With that Abigail turned and began walking, disappearing into the wall as she went back to wherever her body was. Anna figured that was a good idea as well, but Abigail was apparently much more in control of what was happening with all of this than Anna was, or she had at least picked up controlling it faster than Anna had.

“Do you have any idea how I get back to my body?” Anna asked Ben as he gave an unnecessary wave to the now absent Abigail.

“You’re asking the wrong person, I’m afraid,” Ben said. “It just sort of happens for me.”

“But when?” Anna said exasperatedly only to disappear as she said it, leaving Ben alone in his office.

“Who are you talking to?” Lee said, his head poking into the room.

“Just recording some notes, sir,” Ben lied, casually hiding his screen from view. Lee seemed convinced, but lingered to look around Ben’s office anyway. He looked like he was worried about something, and Ben wondered if it had anything to do with the picture Ben had found.

4

All research was drawing a blank. Caleb had been directed to a lot of websites that claimed to have answers regarding what was going on in his head, but none of it was in the least bit useful, either diagnosing him with a number of mental disorders or preaching a lot of spiritual nonsense. With nothing to show Caleb decided to move on in his work.

He was in the midst of the lengthy process of bouncing funds he had taken from Simcoe Co. to so many different banks and accounts that it could never be traced back to where it had come from originally. The funds were then able to be donated to numerous charities and shelters Caleb deemed worthy of it. It was a lengthy process to go through, but it was worth it for the joy he got from being able to give back what these greedy companies had stolen from the public.

He couldn’t donate all the money on the same day, as large donations garnered attention, but speedily set up an algorithm so the money would be donated in reasonable anonymous increments to different charities from different accounts. This part took the longest, and once the algorithm was set and the code in place, all Caleb could do was troubleshoot any problems and wait for the money to run out before he started it all over again with another company.

No errors occurred quick enough to interest Caleb, however, and he found himself growing bored of watching the numbers on his screen change and shift, so he navigated one of his computers to look up any new stories related to his activities. “Simcoe Co. Checks Bounce” was the second article to show up on the new station, which bothered Caleb, as he assumed he was worthy of first dibs on a headliner, but “Simcoe of Simco Co. on Trial for Murder” certainly caught his eye.

“Sounds like something the bastard would do!” Caleb said out loud to no one but himself.

“Who’s a bastard?” a voice asked and Caleb swiveled around. It was the second man he had seen, the one who tried to hit him with a broom.

“You again!” Caleb said, exasperated as he checked out his new surroundings. He was back in the other man’s apartment it seemed, but he was at the desk this time, and not in his bed, which both men seemed satisfied with.

“Me again?” the other man said indignantly. “You’re the one who keeps breaking into my home!”

“I didn’t break in, I just showed up!” Caleb shouted back as the man picked up his phone, likely to call the police.

5

Rob had done his utmost to keep the news on Simcoe’s murder trial quiet, but with word out that his company had been hacked and lost a great deal of money the story was getting more attention than ever. People in the lobby whispered about it as they walked to the elevator, they discussed it over breakfast, they gossiped on the subject at all times during the day and it was worrying Rob to death. It had only been a day since the news had broken and they whole town seemed to know, and they would also know where he had been staying which could be devastating for business.

It was Rob’s express decision to try and avoid the case, or rather both cases now, altogether, but the television his father had left on before he went out for the day had other ideas. Rob quickly walked over to turn it off but something caught his eye. An image of the mayor flashed on the screen and a reported said: “Mayor Rogers claims Simcoe was with him all day the day Nathan Hale was murdered.”

That was wrong. Rob knew that was wrong. He had been avoiding details about the case but things still stuck, and he knew the day this Nathan Hale was murdered Mayor Rogers was in the hotel. He came to visit Simcoe often and Rob was used to it, but Simcoe wasn’t there. Mayor Rogers had gone in the hotel and had gone towards Simcoe’s suite, and was there for quite a while, but Rob had worked the night before and Simcoe had left and not come back.

His heart was pounding. He could be mistaken, he could have missed Simcoe coming in, but he had to check his record book to be sure. Every morning Simcoe ordered a black coffee to his room, if he was there that morning with Mayor Rogers it would show up in Rob’s records.

There was no order for black coffee that morning. Simcoe wasn’t there. The mayor was lying.

The phone rang and Rob tried to keep some composure.

“Front desk,” he said but his voice was shaking a little.

“The cops come asking any questions, you tell them Simcoe was at the hotel,” a muffled voice ordered. Rob froze.

“What?”

“You say Simcoe was there or your dad and you end up missing. I expect you understood me this time.” The caller hung up. Rob was left alone. At least as alone as he was able to be.

“I didn’t break in, I just showed up!” someone said suddenly, and quite loudly. The hotel back area faded away and Rob was instead in a very nice apartment with two other men.

“You’re the man from my hotel lobby,” Rob said, noticing the short thin man who was reaching for his phone.

“You know him too?” a bearded fellow sitting in a black swivel chair said. He seemed the calmest out of all of them, but not like he understood what was happening, just that he was resigned to let it happen.

“He appeared in my lobby the other day then disappeared,” Rob said, looking at both men curiously.

“That one did the same thing in my apartment!” the thinner man said frantically, pointing to the bearded one.

“’That One’ has a name, if you don’t mind!” the other man said, throwing his hands in the air in some kind of offense. “I’m Caleb, now who the fuck are you two?”

6

Mary shot up on the couch in a hot fever, panting from a dream. Calming her breathing she tried to piece together the weirdness of the previous day and the reason for her nightmare. She had come home and collapsed on the couch, her stash from the robbery still beside her. She had been trembling too hard at the time to lock it away, still on edge from the woman’s plea for help and the gunshots she had to avoid. She could still see that awful dead body in the corner of her eye, and that frightened her. She didn’t understand what had happened, but she knew it was real. There was a connection of some kind between her and that woman - but then Mary had seen another woman, Officer Anna Strong. Mary had thought she was a dream at the time, a fantasy brought on by the hot water and scented oils, but he was as real as the second woman, Mary could just feel it.

There wasn’t a puzzle Mary couldn’t solve any more than there was a mess she couldn’t clean up and she was determined to sort out what was happening to her and those other women if it was the last thing she did. Her mind ran through the two women’s problems as she began the process of locking the stolen jewelry in one of her safes. She wouldn’t be able to sell any of it until people stopped looking too hard for the stolen goods, but her other safe was filled with stolen jewelry that had just about been forgotten by the news stations and local jewelers and would be ready for the market any day now. Turning a profit, however, wasn’t a concern for Mary at the moment as she focused on problems other than her own.

The officer, Anna, claimed to have seen a hit-and-run and was played tapes from the day before by her chief, whether he knew it or not. The other woman was shot at by several men after another man had already been shot. A car crash and a shooting. The two didn’t seem connected in any way Mary could piece together, so why were both women in her head?

“I’m Caleb, now who the fuck are you?” A man’s voice appeared out of nowhere and startled Mary. She dropped the bag of jewelry as she turned to see not one, but three men in an apartment she didn’t recognize.

“I’m Mary,” she said, not sure what else to do. No one else seemed sure either.

“I’m Abe,” the short man to Mary’s right said, slowly lowering the phone he had in his hand. Had obviously thought about calling the police. Lucky for Mary he wasn’t following through with that anymore.

“I don’t care who any of you are!” the unnamed taller man to Mary’s left cried. “What is happening here?”

7

Simcoe’s company getting hacked and stolen from didn’t seem to be aiding or hindering Simcoe’s murder case in anyway, but the team was still trying to figure out how to make it useful to them. Pacing in his office Abe ran through his notes from the day. Mayor Rogers was a reliable source who was willing to testify that Simcoe had been with him, which was securely in Simcoe and Abe’s teams favour, but the news about the hack on Simcoe Co. was an interesting development. The team seemed hopeful that whoever had ripped off Simcoe Co. could be discovered and set up as an alternate suspect in the murder of Nathan Hale. And yet, there was a possibility that Nathan Hale was the person responsible for the hack, giving Simcoe motive for the kill. If the prosecuting side went that route, which they likely would, the defending side would need a strong counter argument.

It all seemed a fine mess to Abe, but if he was being honest he was quite sure John Simcoe was guilty. He had no reason to believe such a thing, that is, there was no real evidence besides Simcoe having been in a fight with Nathan Hale that resulted in his blood being on him after Hale’s body was discovered, but something didn’t feel right to Abe. Something in his mind was trying to connect the pieces of this mess and it felt off.

This feeling was not improved by someone shouting “Sounds like something the bastard would do!”

“Who’s a bastard?” Abe asked, turning to see the bearded man from the other day sitting at his desk.

“You again!” the man exclaimed and Abe was infuriated.

“Me again? You’re the one who keeps breaking into my home!” Abe shouted as he picked up his cell phone to ring for the police.

“I didn’t break in, I just showed up!” the bearded man shouted back before another man appeared in the room, which was really the exact opposite of what Abe wanted to have happen.

“You’re the man from my hotel lobby,” the new man said and Abe remembered him as well.

“You know him too?” the bearded man said with a nod of his head.

“He appeared in my lobby the other day then disappeared.”

“That one did the same thing in my apartment!” Abe said, feeling more lost than ever

“’That One’ has a name, if you don’t mind! I’m Caleb, now who the fuck are you two?”

“I’m Mary,” a woman’s voice replied in a surprised kind of way as whatever she was holding dropped to the floor. Abe lowered his phone. This couldn’t be happening.

“I’m Abe,” he said, not sure what else to do.

“I don’t care who any of you are!” the man from the hotel said, which really wasn’t helping the situation. “What is happening here?”

“Are there any other women here?” Mary said, looking about herself.

“No, why, should there be?” Abe said, hoping this woman knew something he didn’t; something she was willing to share.

“The last two people I visited, or was visited by, were women. There was a police officer Anna Strong and a black woman who I didn’t get the name of,” she explained. She seemed to be taking all of this in a very level headed way and Abe had to admire that but also questioned her sanity just slightly.

“A police officer?” the unnamed man asked. “I… think I may have met her as well.”

“Brown hair, nice tits?” Mary said, and the men in the room weren’t sure how to respond to that.

“She had brown hair, yes,” was the man’s dignified response.

“So that’s…” Abe counted in his head quickly, “…six of us then.”

“No, we’re missing Benjamin,” Caleb said, and Abe sighed. “He’s the first one I met.”

“Alright, so we’re up to seven: Me, Caleb, Mary, Benjamin, Anna, an unnamed woman and you,” Abe said, gesturing to the man who still hadn’t given his name. He straightened up when he was referred to as ‘you’.

“I’m Rob,” he said, and Abe was satisfied, until he happened to see a name in the book Rob was holding.

“Does that say John Simcoe?” he asked and Rob looked perturbed.

“Why does it matter?”

“My father’s firm is working his case!” Abe said.

“The… murder?” Caleb asked cautiously and Abe wasn’t sure why.

“Yes. I’m on the team of lawyers defending him.”

“You’re a lawyer?” Mary said, not exactly convinced.

“Well… I’m technically just taking notes,” Abe said in a small voice and Rob snorted. Abe didn’t like that, but it felt like something he would do to someone else, and because of that he decided he liked Rob.

“Why is his name in that book you’re holding?” Abe asked, and Rob seemed unsure how to proceed. Abe could feel he was thinking about something extremely carefully, and in a flash Abe saw what he had seen.

“He didn’t order a coffee,” Abe said out loud, and everyone in the room seemed to have had the same bizarre mind-reading moment and understood that statement.

“What does that mean?” Mary asked, not able to connect that piece of information with what she didn’t know already.

“It means Mayor Rogers was alone in Simcoe’s room and is lying about Simcoe being there,” Abe said. “Simcoe doesn’t have an alibi for the time for the time of the murder.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” Rob said. “I got a call already, they know I worked it out, and I’ll end up the same as Nathan if they find out anyone knows.”

It was quiet in the room as everyone processed what was happening.

“Does anyone else here know anything about Simcoe?” Abe demanded rather than asked. Mary shook her head, semi lost in thought, but Caleb didn’t do anything at all, which all of them found quite telling.

“What do you know?” Abe asked, moving closer to where Caleb was sitting.

“Nothing related to the murder, I swear!” Caleb said. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“Well, tell us what you know and we’ll sort out if it’s useful or not,” Mary said. “Whatever it is, it’s safe with us,” she continued, and Abe wasn’t sure why she had said that. They all barely knew each other, they were strangers in a room with no attachments between them. But there was something to those words, something about what was happening did feel sacred in a way, and there was a sense of trust in the air that Abe had never felt before. It felt good, if almost dangerous.

“I might have stolen a lot of money from Simcoe Co. in the past week,” Caleb said and Mary’s jaw dropped.

“No!” she shouted, not upset, but excited. “You’re the hacker taking from all those companies! That’s the biggest job I’ve ever seen anyone pull, how are you getting away with it!”

It was then that Abe and everyone else noticed the bag of excessively expensive jewelry by Mary’s feet. They all chose not to comment on it, which Abe thought was for the best.

“I’m not stealing the money for myself, I’d like to say,” Caleb continued, avoiding Mary’s question but addressing Abe and Rob’s judgmental looks. “I take money from corrupt corporations and I donate the funds to charities who need it, and deserve it more.”

“Alright, fine, you’re the modern day Robin Hood, what about Simcoe?” Abe said, not particularly caring about where the money went as he was more interested in what he knew about the murder.

“I choose the companies I take from for different reasons, but I chose Simcoe Co. particularly because money was going missing. I followed the trail to the money and it ended up in a bank account under the name Roger Roberts, which I guessed, and confirmed, to be a code name for an alternate account for Mayor Robert Rogers. Obviously Simcoe was involved in bribing Mayor Rogers, so I decided to clear out his accounts. Rather it go to charity than to the mayor’s pockets.”

Abe didn’t know what to do with all this information. Simcoe was bribing the mayor, and the mayor was providing Simcoe with an alibi, but where did Nathan Hale fit in? No one knew anything about him, he didn’t make sense in this equation.

“Where was the murder?” Mary asked suddenly, and Abe could tell she was thinking as fast as he was. Abe looked through his notes but Caleb was faster on his computer.

“An abandoned warehouse on Fourth street,” he said as his eyes skimmed the screen.

“Smith’s Tire Shop?” Mary asked and Caleb nodded.

“Yeah, but the place has been empty forever, so no one would have seen anything.”

“My camera would have,” Mary said suddenly, and everyone perked up.

“You have a camera there?” Abe asked, and everyone crowded closer to Mary. There was a hot tension of excitement in the air.

“The place has been empty forever, which is why it’s perfect for black market trades. I used to do deal there and get people’s faces on camera to blackmail then if I found out they cut me a bad deal on my goods.”

“Are you some kind of burglar?” Rob asked, but Abe and Caleb shushed him.

“It doesn’t matter. The point is, if the person who murdered this Hale guy did it at Smith’s because it was abandoned, they might not have looked for a hidden camera! I may have footage of the crime!”

“Get it and bring it to me!” Abe said, adding that to a growing list of evidence he had against his own companies client.

“You said your firm is defending Simcoe!” Caleb shouted. “Why do you want tapes against him?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Abe said without a second’s hesitation. His father’s firm’s reputation came second to justice in his mind. They could live with losing this case, because whatever this impromptu investigation was leading to, it was big, bigger than a simple murder case, and Abe was in the thick of it with these people in his head.

“Listen, I don’t understand how any of this works or what’s going on,” Caleb said in reference to everything that had just transpired, “but if we’re all in this together I wanna help anyway I can.”

“You know your way around a computer, don’t you?” Abe asked and Caleb nodded. “How about you see what you can find out about Nathan Hale. How does he fit into all of this? Mary we need those tapes. Rob, just act like nothing’s happened at all.”

Rob nodded, but he still looked worried and Abe couldn’t help him with that. He just had to trust that Rob could keep his cool and not let anyone know anything they shouldn’t, not until they knew more about this.

“Do you think the others, the three people that aren’t here that is, know anything else about this?” Abe asked and the group thought about it.

“Benjamin’s an FBI agent, he might be at least useful if he doesn’t know anything,” Caleb said.

“Anna’s a police officer who witnessed a hit-and-run and the other woman I helped escape from people actively shooting at her after they already murdered another person,” Mary added and no one was sure what to do.

“What have we gotten ourselves into,” Rob asked quietly and like that he was gone from the room.

“How’d he do that?” Caleb asked and Abe and Mary shrugged.

“I suppose if you decide to leave you can go. Maybe like this…” she said as she picked up her bag and turned around, leaving out the door and not returning. That left Caleb and Abe alone.

“I suppose since I’m in your home I have to be the one to leave,” Caleb said, and Abe nodded stupidly, unsure what else to do. In the end Caleb just shrugged and slid his chair back into the desk, disappearing as he did so.

Abe was finally alone again, but he didn’t feel like it. Somewhere in his mind all those people, all six of them, were still there, and somehow they were all connected, he just had to figure out how.


End file.
